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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 112 of 143 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two
The Boston Globe's Spotlight team pries open the Catholic Church's decades-long cover-up of child abuse — one sealed record, one silenced victim at a time.
Robby's Spotlight team operates comfortably inside its own routine, prospecting a modest police-corruption story under a departing editor's cover.
Baron's outsider question exposes what the paper has never done: investigate whether Cardinal Law knowingly protected an abusive priest.
The team sets aside its own project and enters unfamiliar territory: survivor networks, a hostile plaintiff's lawyer, and a legal fight to unseal church records.
The team pays the cost of the work — hearing survivor testimony, chasing MacLeish's stonewalling, and combing church directories for a hidden pattern of reassigned priests.
The directory search and Sipe's estimate deliver what they set out for: confirmation that the abuse spans dozens, then eighty-seven, priests across Boston.
At BC High, Robby and Sacha press President Kemeza and spokesman Jack Dunn on whether the school's leadership knew about Father Talbot, and Robby reveals a victim who played hockey under Talbot's own coaching.
Walking back from BC High, Robby tells Sacha that everyone around them, even his own alma mater's PR men, already seems to know the story they're still chasing.
Mike finally gets face time with Judge Volterra to ask about accessing the sealed exhibits.
This scene
JUDGE VIERI VOLTERRA stares down at Mike’s request.
JUDGE VOLTERRA
These exhibits you’re after, Mr.
Rezendes, they’re very sensitive
records.
MIKE
All due respect, your honor, that’s
not the question here. The records
are public.
JUDGE VOLTERRA
Maybe so, but tell me, where is the
editorial responsibility in
publishing records of this nature?
MIKE
Where’s the editorial responsibility
in not publishing them?